didn’t need to put on a front with him.
‘Come on, Adele. It’s not the end of the world. It didn’t take us long to find the next exit and work our way back to the right motorway.’
Adele nodded and sipped her coffee. As always, her anger had run out of fuel and she was left feeling drained.
He caught her eye. ‘Have you ever maybe thought that your standards are a little too high? You set yourself punishing goals and are tough on yourself if you don’t achieve them. You don’t have to prove yourself over and over, you know. It was just a wrong turning. Everybody goes the wrong way at one time or another.’
‘I’m not trying to prove anything or impress anyone. I just like things to be done right. I only ask of myself what I expect in others. It would be hypocritical if I didn’t.’
He nodded slightly to himself. Talk about hitting the nail on the head. To live up to Adele’s standards you needed to be able to pole-vault.
‘I think the closer people get to you, the higher the pass mark is.’
‘Don’t be silly. People don’t need to sit an exam to be my friends.’
Oh, no? Then why did he feel as if every word, every movement he made was being weighed and judged?
‘I think you want everyone to do things the way you do.’
She shook her head while she swallowed a sip of coffee.
‘Just because I don’t plan everything a year in advance, it doesn’t mean I’m hopeless,’ he continued. ‘I’m different from you, Adele, but that doesn’t mean I don’t get things done or I don’t care. I do. I’ve never missed a deadline or broken a contract. It might look like I’m winging it to you, but I’m not. We just have different methods for achieving our goals.’
‘I know that.’
He wanted to hold his stomach and laugh out loud until the retired couple gave him dirty looks.
This was pointless. If he couldn’t make her see sense, he might as well settle for improving her mood. He should have got a little gold star for resisting the urge to crack a joke and try and force a smile out of her.
‘Do you want a pain au chocolat? I saw some on the counter.’
She nodded again, a hint of a smile on her face. He jumped up and paid for it quickly. If Adele didn’t get a blood-sugar boost soon, she’d never cheer up.
He tipped his head to one side and took a good look at her. ‘You look wiped out.’
‘Thanks a lot.’
He reached forward and took her hand. She looked tired, all the fight sucked out of her, but she was still incredibly beautiful. Not in a showy way, but there was a strength in her delicate features that gave an indication of her drive and tenacity, an intelligent light behind her eyes that warned him to keep on his toes.
‘I’ll drive the next leg. Are you insured for that?’
Just for a nanosecond, she visibly sagged. ‘It’s me, Nick. Of course I’m insured. For everything—flood, fire, acts of God, spontaneous combustion…Go on, make a joke about that.’
He squeezed her hand. He’d always loved her fingers—long and fine. He’d missed them.
‘You go back to the car and sink into the passenger seat. I’ve got a couple of things to get from the shop.’
He watched her as she walked away. She always stood so straight, so proud.
How he was going to demolish those proud barriers, he didn’t know. But one thing was certain: he wanted his wife back, and he was going to do everything in his power this weekend to remind her how much she wanted him too.
Just as well he had a few tricks up his sleeve to help nudge her in the right direction.
Pretending to be asleep could in fact be very tiring, Adele decided. She twitched open an eyelid and took a sideways look at Nick. Look at him humming to himself and acting as if he didn’t have a care in the world.
Only a few days ago she’d told this man she wanted him out of her life for good. Yes, he’d looked a little angry at the time, but now it didn’t seem as if it bothered him at all.
She relaxed her eyelid and it dropped closed.
She wasn’t a vindictive person, but part of her was really upset that he wasn’t more upset. Deciding to walk away from their marriage had been the hardest decision of her life. She wanted Nick to look at least a little shell-shocked.
A huge sigh juddered from her body.
For a person who had a pathological need to be right, she wasn’t taking much joy in the fact that, once again, her instincts had been spot-on. Nick didn’t take her seriously, didn’t take their marriage seriously. If he had, he wouldn’t be so blasé about the whole thing.
Then again, if he’d cared, he wouldn’t have left in the first place. He might say he loved her, but he didn’t love her enough. The job had meant more to him.
But now he was back, looking all delectable. And he’d kissed her in the kitchen, hadn’t he? Was there a possibility that he’d regretted his decision to abandon her?
When she’d stood at the front of the church with him, and they’d exchanged their vows, she’d thought it was going to last for ever. She’d been swept along by the intense chemistry between them and hadn’t even stopped to question if there had been enough there to sustain a fifty-year relationship. It had just seemed as if all the right ingredients were there and she hadn’t bothered to dig any deeper.
He’d made her believe they were two contrasting halves of the same whole. Sweet and sour. Light and dark. But, in the end, it had turned out that they were just too different. More like oil and water.
The analogy just didn’t hold up. As soon as the sun arrived, night was swallowed up and it was daytime again. They couldn’t co-exist without one destroying the other—and neither could she and Nick.
A voice she was learning to hate cut the silence. ‘In one thousand feet, take the next exit.’
She opened her eyes and sat up. They were leaving the motorway already? Had she really been asleep and missed most of the journey? A crazy flame of relief flickered in her chest.
It was raining, but instead of the craggy hills and pine trees she’d expected to see, there were rolling fields and hedgerows. And the landscape was depressingly flat. It all looked far too English.
‘Why are we coming off the motorway, Nick? Where are we?’
‘Somewhere just outside of Stafford. Pit stop,’ he added by way of explanation.
Despite the empty feeling in her tummy, she felt her taste buds rebel at the thought of more plastic service-station food. ‘I’m not sure I’m really…Why are we leaving the motorway?’
His co-conspirator saved him from answering.
